Scarlet Street

Scarlet Street is a 1945 American film noir directed by Fritz Lang. The screenplay concerns two criminals who take advantage of a middle-aged painter in order to steal his artwork. The film is based on the French novel La Chienne (literally The Bitch) by Georges de La Fouchardière, which had been previously dramatized on stage by André Mouëzy-Éon, and cinematically as La Chienne (1931) by director Jean Renoir.

The principal actors Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea had earlier appeared together in The Woman in the Window (1944), also directed by Lang. Local authorities in New York, Milwaukee, and Atlanta banned Scarlet Street early in 1946 because of its dark plot and themes.

The film is in the public domain.

Plot
New York, 1934 – Christopher "Chris" Cross, a late middle-aged cashier for a clothing retailer, is fêted by his employer for 25 years of service. After presenting Chris with a gold watch and kind words, company owner J.J. Hogarth leaves the party and gets into a limousine with his beautiful blonde mistress. Chris muses to a colleague about his desire to be loved by a young woman like that.

Walking home through Greenwich Village still in his tuxedo, Chris sees a young dish, Katherine "Kitty" March, being attacked by a drunken assailant; Chris flails the man with his umbrella, who slips and is knocked out by a curb. While Chris dashes off to summon a policeman, the assailant, who is actually Kitty's boyfriend Johnny, flees. Chris walks Kitty to her apartment. His wistful remarks about art and formal dinner attire suggest to her that Chris must be a wealthy painter rather than the meek amateur he is. Enamored of Kitty and thinking she feels affection for him, Chris tells her about his loveless marriage. His shrewish wife Adele idolizes her previous husband, a policeman honored for drowning while trying to rescue a suicidal woman.

Needing funds for a shady business deal, Johnny believes that Kitty should play on Chris's naivete and feign romantic interest to swindle him. Kitty persuades Chris to rent her an apartment, suggesting that he can use it as his art studio. Chris falls for it, steals $500 in insurance bonds from his wife, and later $1,000 cash from his employer.

Unknown to Chris, Johnny tries selling some of his paintings, leaving them with a street vendor who believes them worth no more than $25. They attract the interest of art critic Damon Janeway, who declares the work original and brilliant. After Johnny persuades Kitty to pretend that she painted them, she charms Janeway with Chris's own views about art. Captivated by the paintings and her, Janeway advances Kitty’s career. However, Adele sees her husband's paintings, signed "Katherine March", in the window of an exclusive art gallery and accuses Chris of copying March's work. Chris confronts Kitty, who claims that she had sold them because she needed the money. Delighted that his creations are appreciated, he lets her remain the public face of his art. It becomes a huge commercial success, but Chris never receives a dime.

Adele's supposedly dead first husband Higgins appears at Chris's office to extort money from him. Higgins disappeared after discovering $2,700 in the purse of the woman he had tried to save. Already suspected of taking bribes from speakeasies, he faked his death to escape both his crimes and his gargoyle of a wife. Chris steals another $200 from the safe for Higgins. Chris plots for Adele to ambush Higgins, delighted that his marriage will be invalidated when Higgins is found alive.

Chris goes to see Kitty, believing that he is now free and that she will marry him. He finds Johnny and Kitty in an embrace, confirming his worst fears. However, when Chris still asks Kitty to marry him, she spurns him for being old and ugly and laughs in his face. Enraged, he stabs her to death with an ice pick. The police appear at Chris's office, tipped off by Higgins that Chris has embezzled money from Hogarth, who refuses to press charges, but fires Chris. Johnny is arrested for Kitty's murder.

At the trial, Johnny's past works against him. Chris denies painting the pictures, claiming to be an untalented artist. Several witnesses confirm Chris's testimony and attest to Johnny's misdeeds and bad character. Johnny is convicted and put to death, and Kitty is immortalized as a great talent lost too soon.

Haunted by getting away with murder, Chris attempts to hang himself on the night of Johnny's execution, but is prevented by Good Samaritans. Five years later he is homeless and destitute, with no way of claiming credit for his own paintings. He witnesses his portrait of Kitty selling for $10,000. Tormented by voices of the ghosts of Kitty and Johnny, Chris wanders New York, broke, broken, and mad.

Cast

 * Edward G. Robinson as Christopher "Chris" Cross
 * Joan Bennett as Katherine "Kitty" March
 * Dan Duryea as Johnny Prince
 * Margaret Lindsay as Millie Ray
 * Rosalind Ivan as Adele Cross
 * Jess Barker as Damon Janeway
 * Charles Kemper as Patch-eye Higgins
 * Anita Sharp-Bolster as Mrs. Michaels (as Anita Bolster)
 * Samuel S. Hinds as Charles Pringle
 * Vladimir Sokoloff as Pop LeJon
 * Arthur Loft as Delarowe
 * Russell Hicks as J.J. Hogarth

Production
Scarlet Street reunited director Fritz Lang with actors Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea, who had worked with him in The Woman in the Window (1944). The film was based on the French novel La Chienne (literally The Bitch) by Georges de La Fouchardière, which had been dramatized on stage by André Mouëzy-Éon, and cinematically as La Chienne (1931) by director Jean Renoir. Lang's film Human Desire (1954) was based on another Renoir film, La Bête humaine (1938), which was based on Émile Zola's novel on the same name. Renoir was said to have disliked both of Lang's films.

Scarlet Street is similar to The Woman in the Window in its themes, cast, crew and characters. Robinson again plays a lonely middle-aged man, and Bennett and Duryea once more play the criminal couple. Both films were photographed by Milton R. Krasner. Walter Wanger, who produced the film, had earlier produced Lang's 1937 film You Only Live Once.

Though Scarlet Street is considered a film noir classic, along with Lang's earlier film The Woman in the Window, Robinson, who noticed the thematic similarities between the two, found the production of Scarlet Street monotonous and was eager to finish it and move on to other projects. Robinson had also disliked making The Woman in the Window. Twelve paintings created for the film by John Decker were sent to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for exhibition in March 1946.

Box office
According to Variety, the film earned rentals of $2.5 million in the U.S.

Reception
New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther gave the film a mixed review. He wrote:

"But for those who are looking for drama of a firm and incisive sort, Scarlet Street is not likely to furnish a particularly rare experience. Dudley Nichols wrote the story from a French original, in which it might well have had a stinging and grisly vitality. In this presentation, however, it seems a sluggish and manufactured tale, emerging much more from sheer contrivance than from the passions of the characters involved. And the slight twist of tension which tightens around the principal character is lost in the middle of the picture when he is shelved for a dull stretch of plot. In the role of the love-blighted cashier Edward G. Robinson performs monotonously and with little illumination of an adventurous spirit seeking air. And, as the girl whom he loves, Joan Bennett is static and colorless, completely lacking the malevolence that should flash in her evil role. Only Dan Duryea as her boy friend hits a proper and credible stride, making a vicious and serpentine creature out of a cheap, chiseling tinhorn off the streets."

A review in Variety magazine stated: "Fritz Lang's production and direction ably project the sordid tale of the romance between a milquetoast character and a gold-digging blonde ... Edward G. Robinson is the mild cashier and amateur painter whose love for Joan Bennett leads him to embezzlement, murder and disgrace. Two stars turn in top work to keep the interest high, and Dan Duryea's portrayal of the crafty and crooked opportunist whom Bennett loves is a standout in furthering the melodrama."

Time magazine gave Scarlet Street a negative review, describing the plot as clichéd and with dimwitted, unethical, stock characters.

Critic Dennis Schwartz wrote in 2003:"Scarlet Street is a bleak psychological film noir that has the same leading actors as his 1944 film The Woman in the Window. It sets a long-standing trend of a criminal not punished for his crime; this is the first Hollywood film where that happened ... The Edward G. Robinson character is viewed as an ordinary man who is influenced by an evil couple who take advantage of his vulnerability and lead him down an amoral road where he eventually in a passionate moment loses his head and commits murder. Chris's imagination can no longer save him from his dreadful existence, and his complete downfall comes about as the talented artist loses track of reality and his dignity."

In 1995, Matthew Bernstein wrote in Cinema Journal: "The film is a dense, well-structured film noir and has been analyzed and interpreted numerous times. Some of the earliest interpretations came from censors in three different cities," adding: "On January 4, 1946, the New York State Censor Board banned Scarlet Street entirely, relying on the statute that gave it power to censor films that were 'obscene, indecent, immoral, inhuman, sacrilegious' or whose exhibition 'would tend to corrupt morals or incite to crime.' As if in a chain reaction, one week later the Motion Picture Commission for the city of Milwaukee also banned the film as part of a new policy encouraged by police for 'stricter regulation of undesirable films.' On February 3 Christina Smith, the city censor of Atlanta, argued that because of 'the sordid life it portrayed, the treatment of illicit love, the failure of the characters to receive orthodox punishment from the police, and because the picture would tend to weaken a respect for the law,' Scarlet Street was 'licentious, profane, obscure and contrary to the good order of the community.'... Universal was discouraged from challenging the constitutionality of the censors by the protests of the national religious groups that arose as the Atlanta case went to court."

In 1998, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader included the film in his unranked list of the best American films not included on the AFI Top 100.